SIR CONAN DOYLE'S FIRST CASE.

Conan Doyle, on being asked why he gave up the practice of medicine, replied

that it was too hard work and related a story which is transcribed in the New York Tribune. The doctor's first call took place on a cold January midnight.

The jangle of the door-bell woke me from a sound sleep, and, shivering and yawning, I put my head out of the window and said:

"Who's there?"

"Doctor," said a voice, "can you come to Peter Smith's house at once? His youngest girl has took a dose of laudanum by mistake for paregoric, and we're afraid she'll die."

"All right; I'll come," I said.

I dressed and tramped three miles. through the cold and wet to Smith's. Twice on the way I fell on the icy pavement, and once my hat blew off and I was half an hour finding it. Finally I reached Smith's. The house was darkshutters all closed-not a light. I rang the bell. No answer. At last a head stuck itself gingerly out of the window in the third story.

"Be you Doctor Doyle?" it said.
"Yes, let me in."

"Oh, no need to come in, doctor," said the head. "Child's all right; sleeping quiet."

"But how much laudnaum did you give it?"

"Only two drops, doctor. Not enough to hurt a cat. Guess I had better take my head in now. Night air is cold. Sorry to have troubled you."

The parrot, for many years somewhat out of favor as a pet, has of late been steadily regaining popularity. He is certainly a bird of brains and beauty. Of his disposition less can be said in commendation; his speaking voice, however startlingly human, is never mellifluous; and his laugh-is there any sound more contemptuous, irritating, malevolent, even fiendish, then the harsh, shrieking laughter of a parrot?

There is also another fault, always to be mentioned with due charity since it is not originally his own-his deplorable tendency to the use of profane language. Indeed, the swearing parrot, with his innocently profane intrusions. upon serious or sentimental conversation, has become a stock personage in

comic anecdote and literature.

Poor Polly! Even when he does not acquire bad language during his first voyage away from his native wilds, he may learn other things equally undesirable.

An old lady, who had returned indignantly to the bird dealers one fine parrot whose manner of speech was that of Jack at sea in a storm, received in exchange a beautiful green creature with a wise eye, recommended as of impeccable conversation.

"You'll find him everything he ought to be, ma'am," they assured her. "We'll warrant him polite, refined and innocent. You see, he was brought over in the ladies' cabin."

In a few days she returned, her bonnet twinkling with wrath, bringing Polly with her.

"You needn't tell me that parrot swore, ma'am!" began the dealer, when he saw her. "He couldn't swear; he don't know how; he never heard an oath in his life."

"Swear!" said the irate old lady. "No, he didn't swear; I'd almost rather he would swear. I hung up his cage in the dining-room and for a few days he didn't utter a sound. Then one day, when I had callers, he began making the most awful sounds-perfectly dreadful sounds and kept it up, crowing and if he never choking and gasping as meant to stop; and then at the very end he sang out feebly, 'Steward—bucket!' Take him back and give me a good, plain, every-day, stay-at-home canary bird. I'm done with parrots."

Poor, poor Polly! Truly, his immigration and education are beset with difficulties. In the forecastle the sailors are not sick, but they swear; in the cabin the ladies do not swear, but they are sick.

FISH THAT ARE NOT FISH.

Somebody has said that apple pie is pie and all other pie is only pastry. It appears from the following story, told by the author of "Caribou Shooting in Newfoundland," that there is a similar distinction between fish and fish:

"On our way into the interior of Newfoundland part of our route was over a lovely lake, five miles long by about three-fourths of a mile wide. We had not proceeded far when I thought I could occasionally see the water break with a splash in close proximity to the canoe. Seated in the bow, I turned to the native who was handling the paddle in the stern, and inquired whether there were any fish in the pond.

"Fish? No, sir-no fish, sir.' "Presently, when about half way up the lake, and just as the sun was peeping over the eastern horizon, I saw not six feet from the bow of the canoe a magnificent salmon rise to the surface and with a swish of his tail disappear to the depths. Again I turned to my friend. with the remark:

"Daddy, did I understand you to say that there were no fish in this lake?'

"No fish, sir-no fish.'

"Yes, but-I beg your pardon—I— a moment ago saw what I took to be a twelve or fifteen pound salmon break the water not six feet from the bow of the canoe.'

"Oh, yes, that was a salmon. There are plenty of trout and salmon in all these waters, but no fish, sir. You know we don't count anything as fish in these parts but codfish, sir.'"

ANGLO-GERMAN ARBITRATION.

Great Britain and Germany have concluded a treaty of arbitration similar to those already concluded by Great

Wireless telegraphy as a means of communication between the ships of a scattered fleet during war maneuvers is having its first real test in the present struggle in the far East, and in at least one case it has done what was predicted for it-notified one fleet of the presence of an enemy.

Although there have been attempts to maintain secrecy in dispatches by use of differently "tuned" instruments, the Japanese instruments have been affected by the Russian dispatches. On the night of February 8th, after Rear-Admiral Togo had divided his fleet and sent Rear-Admiral Uriu with a small squadron and two divisions of torpedo-boats to Chemulpo, and had gone with the rest to head off the main Russian fleet at Port Arthur, Admiral Togo's chief anxiety was lest the Russians should leave Port Arthur before his torpedo-boat divisions reached it, and should have joined the Koreetz and Variag at Chemulpo, in which case the squadron of Rear-Admiral Uriu would probably be annihilated.

The first reassurance he had came during the early evening, while he was still out of sight of land, thirty or forty miles from Port Arthur. The wireless instrument on the flag-ship suddenly began working, picking up a mysterious message from the air. Most of it was unintelligible to the "Japs," probably on account of cipher, but one word was plain-Askold. The Askold was one of the Russian cruisers, and the dispatch was evidently from one of the Russian

fleet. The ship which sent it could. not have been far below the horizon, certainly nowhere near Chemulpo, and the Japanese were at once encouraged to believe that the enemy were still dirctly ahead of them in Port Arthur harbor. That proved to be the case.

RESCUING CHINESE SLAVES.

Slavery in the United States still exists in a most loathsome form in San Francisco, says Everybody's Magazine. The reference is to the servitude of Chinese women in the notorious "Chinatown" of that city. For many years a determined war has been waged upon it by the Presbyterian Chinese Mission of that city, but although much diminished it still persists.

Much of the work during the last ten years has been done under the personal direction of Miss Donaldine Cameron, a young woman of Scottish descent, who attributes her success in "raiding" Chinese dens to an inheritance of her "Hieland" forefathers' aptitude for cattleraiding. Time and again she has taken her life in her hands and plunged boldly into the dens in search of some slave girl who had sent word that she wished to be free for slavery can be prevented only by consent of the slave. Rescue is impossible so long as the slave is in voluntary servitude.

Two years ago, with a sergeant of police, Miss Cameron raided a den in San Luis alley, a narrow thoroughfare in the worst depths of Chinatown. They eluded the watchman and made for the door of the marked house. The sergeant, putting his shoulder against it, broke it in.

The screaming and chattering of Chinese women, which had begun with the attack, sounded farther and farther away. The raiders found the lights

burning, a tea-urn singing in the corner, a guitar with its strings still quivering, but there was no one in sight, and there was no visible exit from the room.

Experienced in these things, they knew there was a secret passage somewhere, leading to the endless mazes of underground Chinatown. They went. over the wall foot by foot, pressing and tapping. At last, under a couch, Miss Cameron found a spot which sounded hollow. The sergeant had stepped outside, but Miss Cameron, too excited to think of the consequences, pressed with all her might, and a panel dropped away. Below was darkness.

Miss Cameron rolled bodily through and fell six feet. The sergeant, hearing her call, ran to the hole and held a lighted candle. There was a passage, stretching farther away than they could. see, and so narrow that to thread it one must stoop and present his shoulders sideways. Following it to a widening, they found a Chinese hag lying face downward. Without ceremony the sergeant rolled her over. She was the mistress of the house. Under her was a trap-door, padlocked.

Miss Cameron snatched the keys from the woman's belt, unlocked this door, and dropped again into foul-smelling blackness. They found another passage, narrower than the first. It sloped downward for a story till they were deep underground, turned two or three times, ascended by two flights of stairs as steep as ladders, and ended in a deserted room, with a door in the farther

corner.

Again the sergeant's shoulder forced a way, and they fell out into the fresh air. They were on the alley, only six feet from the door by which they had entered the building. A casual watcher told them that two minutes after they had entered six Chinese women and two

men had come out through the last door, ran across the street and disappeared. The girl they sought had not yet been rescued.

Many attempts have been made to kill Miss Cameron, but she has escaped unharmed. Her rescues of slaves have made the business so precarious that three thousand dollars is now the price for a fourteen-year-old girl and two thousand for a baby.

GLADSTONE AND HIS WIFE.

A pretty glimpse of Gladstone and his wife is afforded by some reminiscences of Mr. George W. E. Rusell, in his new volume, "The Household of Faith." It is well that their married life was a long honeymoon, and that Gladstone entrusted her with all his secrets.

The jocose and genial side of the life of the great premier and his wife is very attractive. With quaint enjoyment Gladstone used to grasp his wife's hand and sing the refrain of his favorite "Fiddler's Song": "A ragamuffin husband and a rantipoling wife,

We'll fiddle it and scrape it through the ups and downs of life."

Gladston's confidence in his wife was delightful. At the outset of their married life Gladstone saw that he was destined for a public career, and gave her the choice between two alternatives-to know nothing and be free from responsibility; to know everything and be bound to secrecy. Fifty years later Gladstone said to a friend:

"My wife has known every political secret I ever had, and has never betrayed my confidence."

There was one question, which shows the real strength of the rule. When Gladstone was first a member of the cabinet, his young wife dropped a word in the presence of some of his colleagues which implied that she was acquainted with a matter of great importance. Realizing that she had made a slip, she left the room and wrote a note of apology, which she sent to her husband by a servant. The reply that came back was to this effect:

The recent death of the English philosopher, Herbert Spencer, recalls the only visit he ever made to America, a brief journey in 1882. On that occasion a banquet was given in New York in his honor. Henry Ward Beecher was one of the after-dinner speakers"I am asked," said Mr. Beecher, "how I reconcile Spencer with theology. I don't.

"A man who has a bald-headed deacon watching everything he does, or a gold-spectacled lawyer-not a fat one" (looking at Mr. Bristow), "but a long, lean, lank one" (looking at Mr. Evarts)—"can't afford to talk Spencerism from the pulpit.

"It is to be borne in mind that when a man is driving a team of fractious horses that are just all he can manage anyhow, he is not in a state of mind to discuss questions with his wife by his side, who is undertaking to bring up delicate domestic matters."

It has been said that Mr. Spencer had no sense of humor, but he joined heartily in the merriment which Mr. Beecher's speech provoked.

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Two brothers went up from a small village in Aberdeenshire to see the sights of London, and when the Sabbath came round they entered an Episcopal Church some good while in advance of the service. Taking up prayerbook which lay in the pew, the elder brother examined it page after page with evident curiosity, the book being new to his Presbyterian experience. At last, shaking his head, he said: "Come awa' oot, Sandy, the service is just 'collect,' 'collect,' 'collect,' frae end to end. It's no' the kirk for puir folk ava."